In Whitehall, an unfading bloom

IN THE BURBS

Haines Florist, 93 this year, carries on

Corrine Haines and her husband Donald have owned Haines Florist in Whitehall… (MONICA CABRERA, THE MORNING…)

January 03, 2012|Daniel Patrick Sheehan | In The Burbs

In 1919, Eugene and Hattie Haines opened a flower shop in Whitehall Township, and it's still there. Despite the march of time, despite the mammoth garden centers at Home Depot and Lowe's, despite the fresh-cut flowers in the supermarkets, despite it all, Haines Florist carries on.

Lucky for us. We had been driving around fruitlessly for miles and miles Tuesday when we happened to see a sign along Main Street that said "Roses $18.99 a dozen." The sign caught our imaginations, because it was 26 degrees and windy and the best thing to do under those conditions is to find a warm place where things grow.

We walked in and found what seemed to be a converted garage with a table in the center. There was a refrigerator case full of cut flowers and shelves loaded with offerings of this winding-down season: evergreen wreaths, poinsettias, miniature Christmas trees hung with tiny ornaments.

Some of this flora was real, a lot of it was silk. It was all quite beautiful. I noticed a cross covered with red flowers and imagined it bringing warmth to a graveyard in winter. (I also spotted a couple of antique typewriters on a high shelf, but they don't really enter into the story).

A sign on the table said to go ring the doorbell at the house if no one was around, but just as I was preparing to do that, a woman came in. She turned out to be Corrine Haines, the daughter-in-law of the founders. She and her husband, Donald, had taken the business over back in the late 1960s when Hattie grew ill and Eugene had to take care of her.

When Corrine spoke, her accent was Pennsylvania Dutch and her story was a little sad. Haines Florist survived the advent of the big stores, true, but Corrine said it isn't nearly the shop it used to be.

"I had 5,000 geraniums at one time," she said.

That gave me a nice mental picture of pink and red and purple starbursts stretching into the far reaches of the shop, which opens onto an enormous greenhouse area that now houses Donald's cars and trucks, but not much greenery.

Corrine was reserved at first but opened up as she talked about the heyday of the shop at 2430 Main St., in the West Catasauqua area.

"This is the area we used to fill up back in the 1970s and '80s," she said, remembering long hours of tending bedding plants for customers who would crowd the small lot and even park along the road on the busiest days. "Then the big outfits moved in."

Things are much quieter, now. Corrine is 73 and said she is too old to do bedding flowers — those heavy beds of bloomed plants used in landscaping — so she has scaled back. "I sell cut flowers, roses, cemetery arrangements," she said. "Easter flowers, when it's time for that."

She took us outside and showed us where the original greenhouse stood. There's nothing left now but the concrete foundation. It was a wistful, wintry sight.

Like most people I've met in the mom-and-pop world, Corrine said her favorite thing was not the flowers but the customers. Many of her long-time regulars have passed on, though, and the younger generations are far more likely to get what they need on Saturday excursions to the big stores.

Too bad. I told Corrine that you always get better service in the smaller places.